I recently had a rear mech shifter cable snap inside the shifter & struggled to remove it, so thought it would be a good time to ‘upgrade’ to the Click & Cog.
Since installing the Cog & trying to use the click controllers I have been unable to consistently get them to work.
Kit-wise, I have:
Elite Direto trainer
Cospoo HRM
Click Controllers
Windows PC running Zwift with a dedicated wi-fi/bluetooth PCI card
Ant+ dongle also connected to the PC
Previously I would have the trainer connected in Ant+ and the HRM connected via Bluetooth.
Once I realised that the trainer had to be connected via Bluetooth for the Click controllers to work, I unplugged the Ant+ dongle.
I have managed to get the controllers to connect & used them in Zwift, but the connection seems very hit and miss.
Yesterday I spent some time looking into it and deleted the “known devices” file from the Zwift folder, made sure my software was all up to date and tried to get everything to connect. In case the Bluetooth device in my PC was being overloaded I plugged my ANT+ dongle back in and used that to take the HRM connection.
Everything seemed to connect OK, although the Zwift Controllers are a little slow to connect compared to everything else. I didn’t actually attempt a ride because I was short of time & everything seemed to be connected OK so I figured it would work OK in-game.
However, this morning I wanted to do my usual ride at 6:30am and while everything seemed to connect without bother there were no gear change options once I got riding on Zwift. The controllers were connected in so far as I could steer & use the buttons to make menu choices, but the gear changing was not available.
I checked the settings and looked in the hardware tab and the menu options in there were very short (two menu options) with nothing related to virtual shifting that I had previously seen when the Controllers were connected.
Overall this is a very frustrating situation. One of the reasons I have not used the Cog & Click previously was to avoid this issue of connectivity & risk making a simple thing, more complicated. I only made the change as I had the mechanical failure with the shifter cable, but now I cannot even ride in Zwift as I have no gear control. I don’t have a lot of spare time for exercise, so normally ride on a Monday & Friday morning for an hour on Zwift. I don’t have time to spend a large portion of that time trying to get the technology to work. This morning I gave up after 3 restarts of Zwift and searching through menus, and went for a run instead.
Short of returning them & getting my mechanical shifting working again, I am not sure what steps to take next.
Thanks. I did this. There are no firmware update for the controllers or the trainer and there are no Zwift updates available so I assume I’m on the latest version of Zwift.
I also checked the drivers for the wifi/bluetooth card in my PC and they are up to date.
I am only using the Ant+ dongle for the HRM. Everything else is through Bluetooth; trainer & controllers.
I did originally have everything through Bluetooth and the Ant+ dongle was disconnected, but the connectivity was not great.
So, I plugged the Ant+ dongle back in to connect just the HRM, in case I had too many devices connected via bluetooth and that was maybe overloading the Bluetooth connection or causing a conflict. Maybe I will try again with the Ant+ dongle disconnected again.
Removing the dongle will rule out the possibility of accidentally pairing the trainer via ANT+. By design ANT+ pairs faster since it doesn’t need to negotiate frequency, but it will kill virtual shifting if the trainer uses it.
If the Bluetooth adapter isn’t reliable, using a RealTek dongle like the TP-Link UB500 is a common solution. The Intel adapter would need to be disabled first.
Yeah, I will definitely try removing the ANT+ dongle.
Other people have mentioned a different bluetooth receiver - I’ll have a look at that TP-Link one. Thanks.
I am also going to see how the performance is if I use my phone and the Companion app as a bridge, but would rather not do that if I can solve it by other means.
I’m hoping to have a play around with it in an hour or so, so will update after that
I removed the Ant+ dongle and the controllers connected fine and I actually had the gear shifting functionality once in Zwift.
I guess there is some kind of conflict, as I was definitely connecting the trainer & controllers via Bluetooth this morning - different symbol & description, so easy to see which one you are connecting via.
Only problem now is that the HRM won’t connect (which is why I had reconnected the Ant+ dongle).
Initially I had the ‘connecting’ message with the addition of ‘No Signal’ in white within the connecting pane for the HRM. I left it for a while to sort itself out, but it didn’t. I clicked on the pane to break the connection & then clicked again to go into the pairing options sub-screen. Now there was no connection options for the HRM& Zwift would not find the HRM again. That has had a new battery a few weeks ago, so I know it is working OK (and it connects fine to Ant+).
Maybe I will try a new bluetooth adaptor, but I don’t really want to just throw new parts at it in the hope that something works.
At least the controllers are working properly so I can shift gears!
I have the same issue with the HRM and BT (Garmin HRM-Pro or something…higher end and new). I do use a UB500 BT dongle (TP-Link) and that is strong enough signal to not mix with the Ant+. Board level BT is too weak.
I also use the Ant+ for secondary device capture on my head unit…just to verify my Quarq vs KickrV6. My riding level in no way warrants the necessity.
Just to update further to this - I bought a TP-Link UB600 BT dongle - was only £7 online.
Disabled the BT on the wi-fi card via Device Manager, stuck the new dongle into a spare USB slot on the front of the PC case & everything connected almost straight away.
Did 2 mins of riding in Zwift just to confirm the functionality & it worked fine - HRM, gear change - everything working as it should.
So - that seems to be problem solved. Thanks for the tips & ideas. I just wanted to update in case someone with the same problem in future stumbles across this thread.
